Why Atmos & DTS:X Still SUCK - January 2021
I don't think very many people really know what Atmos or DTS:X "sound like" because ALMOST NOBODY is producing discs or cinema movies having soundtracks that were mastered appropriately for the new formats. Any comments made about Atmos and DTS:X so far are irrelevant so far, because there just aren't movies out there that use the height channels appropriately (well, not many). In real life, EVERTHING you hear from crickets and wind to explosions and weapon noises have a height component. In Atmos and DTS:X movies, for the most part, NONE of that is every put into the height channels because no human is in charge of the mastering. Instead, I swear it sounds like they run a 5.1 or 7.1 soundtrack through Dolby Surround or DTS Neural:X, then decode that discrete channel information into the blu-ray disc. Only problem is, both Dolby Surround and Neural:X sound AWFUL when you use them on movies or music. Seriously AWFUL.
Here is an example, in the Star Trek movie where 1000s of enemies attack the Enterprise by stabbing into the hull of the ship, ripping the hull open enough to allow attackers to enter the Enterprise. Once inside, there is gun fire everywhere, and all kinds of fighting and explosions. During all of that, you hear NOTHING, literally NOTHING from the height channels. If you were in that environment, the overhead sound would be HUGE, but in the actual movie sound track, there is NOTHING but silence until you hear "Red Alert" announced several times. Talk about UNREALISTIC. It's actually PATHETIC because that announcement causes you to notice that the height channels have been silent during this whole grand combat scene--and all of the movie preceding it. (I don't count soundtrack music as being a legitimate immersive sound element... mostly, music in the height channels alone is distracting and unsettling. Music that has 2/3 of the instruments in the 5.1 or 7.1 sound and the other 1/3 in the immersive channels is VERY distracting since we never hear music like that in real life. All the music should be in the 5.1 or 7.1 channels with just musical AMBIENCE in the immersive channels for the sound to be natural.
This is NOT a condemnation of Atmos or DTS:X. It is a condemnation of STUDIOS for not putting up the money to put human intelligence behind the mastering of "immersive" soundtracks. One movie I investigated early after Atmos and DTS:X tracks were appearing had EXACTLY 5 seconds of sound in the entire 2 hour movie, and then it was only 2 or 3 musical instruments of the soundtrack, not anything actually in the movie. Essentially, there are maybe 5 movies released with "decent" immersive soundtracks that meet the promise, at least partially, for immersive sound---at least when it comes to Atmos and DTS:X movies released in the US.
Our only "defense" against bad Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks is to review movies appropriately. Turn off the amps for the ear level channels so you can only hear the height channels and do something else while the movie plays... you'll be able to easily notice how much or how little sound there is in the height channels even if you aren't paying "hard" attention to the movie being played. You can be EASILY fooled into thinking you are hearing things in the height channels when they are really originating in the 5.1 or 7.1 speakers, NOT the height channels.
The only place I have seen disc reviews that actually tell you how good or bad the immersive sound quality is by LISTENING to the isolated height channels and looking at channel activity monitors is Widescreen Review magazine. I'm not saying nobody else does this, but it's the only place I've seen it done so far. They actually assign a rating on a 5-star scale for how good or bad the immersive sound was (along with the 5.1 or 7.1 sound rating, and image quality rating). When Atmos and DTS:X were new, I assumed there was stuff in the immersive channels. Imagine my surprise then to find that most movies had fewer than 5 minutes of sound of any kind in the height channels with nearly NONE of it being ambient sound placed in the height channels---so most movies are 5.1 or 7.1 for all but 5 minutes of their run times. The first time I listened to these soundtracks without the 5.1 or 7.1 speakers active, I instantly found the source of my dissatisfaction.
What's worse is that if you have one of these bad DTS:X or Atmos soundtracks on a disc, if you do NOT use Atmos or DTS:X to decode the soundtrack, but instead use AuroMatic 3-D to decode the movie disc, AuroMatic will IGNORE the Atmos and DTS:X encoding and put near continuous ambience in the height channels while still putting other height effects up there, like fly-overs and such. That combat scene on the Enterprise was FULL of echoes and gunfire bounces and the Red Alert announcements instead of being SILENT during the combat. Dolby Surround makes stereo music sound like C-R-A-P, seriously bad. DTS Neural:X makes music sound a little better than D.S. but stereo still sounds better. AuroMatic 3-D on the other hand sounds better than stereo music 100% of the time (so far). (disclosure: I have used audio systems valued between $15,000 for electronics and speakers up to ~$150,000 and have been examining immersive soundtracks since the first discs appeared.)
If you want to get into immersive sound and you don't have AuroMatic 3-D, AuroMatic 2-D, and Auro 3-D decoding, you are completely missing the best immersive sound you can get while studios are still screwing up nearly every Atmos and DTS:X soundtrack. In Europe, many movies on discs have Auro-3D soundtracks. I have only ordered one of those, so my experience is limited and I can't say whether Auro-3D movies generally have better immersive sound than Atmos or DTS:X or not based on that one movie. But you can order movies from Amazon.co.uk (for example) that have Auro-3D soundtracks and compare those to the US versions of the disc that have Atmos or DTS:X. If you don't have Auro-3D and it's immersive processing (originally AuroMatic, but recently has changed to AuroMatic 2-D and AuroMatic 3-D where AuroMatic 2-D expands stereo to 5.1 or 7.1 sound and AuroMatic 3-D that expands the sound into 5.1 or 7.1 PLUS height channels you have installed. AuroMatic single-handedly restored my faith in immersive sound after the horrible disservice being done to it by Movie Studios in the US. Currently, for me, Atmos and DTS:X decoding are worthless to me. I will not own a pre-pro or AVR that doesn't include Auro because I constantly use AuroMatic on everything. I am one of those people who thought 4.0 or 5.1 or 7.1 music would NEVER sound good. But once I heard stereo music played with AuroMatic 3-D processing, I won't listen to music any other way, unless I HAVE to use some other device in my system for a period and it doesn't have Auro. My stereo-purism was blown away (literally) by AuroMatic.
